Before I left for Belgium my rotary club had a little picnic for the Rebounds and I , and it was really great . I got to hear about how my friends spent their year in a different country . The mother of one of the rebounds gave me this advice: be prepared for an awkward situation at least every day, and she was right. If you want to be a Rotary exchange student you gotta be okay with awkward. I think I'll go a head and give myself the title of QUEEN OF AWKWARD, and run through some scenarios i've faced already.
* My first day there ,I'm doing pretty well with French , it's not always pronounced right but , can you really blame me? I'm talking to my host mom about my friend that lives in the Netherlands, and in French the Netherlands is Pays Bas and the way I pronounced it apparently sounded like "play boy" sooo I have a friend that's a play boy bunny ....
* Second day we go to the school so I can pick out my classes and they give me a copy of my schedule and they're like don't lose this because you need it to extend your visa. what do you think i did with it ? LOST IT , I have no job here except to learn french and i couldn't even keep a damn piece of paper .
* Yesterday : My host parents are in an Orchestra and they hold practices in Bruxelles and they invited me to come watch , being a impossibly gifted musician i said yes. They failed to mention that they would be picking up two fellow musicians on the way. So here I am crammed into the back seat of their car , which isn't too big with two old men driving down the Belgian highway . I'm sure to the untrained eye if you were to pass us on the road you'd think to yourself , they must be filming To Catch a Predator, but I assure you , we're just a bunch of musicians.
But seriously here you have to roll with the punches , go where they take you and enjoy it, and I have my family has been more than welcoming as well as with everyone I've met. You really can't afford to be shy if you do an exchange unless you had planned to spend the whole year in sworn silence. Anyone can tell you I'm a pretty extroverted person and it's helping a lot , I'll muddle my way through french trying to tell people who i am and why i'm here and there is the the occasional English speaker. My family doesn't speak any English and I'm very happy with it because I'm learning , Quickly ! Also the fact that they're musicians helps, this is going to sounds sappy and you're going to call me a 'band geek' and if so, you can kindly shove it , but music can be a common language. I don't completely understand french and they don't completely understand English but we both can read music .
Now I'm not completely sure what the point of this post was. I'm just kind of rambling I guess the point is that if you do rotary it's not always going to be a cake walk but its going to be the greatest thing you've ever done .
OH some things i forgot to mention earlier
1) I'm the only Exchange student in my Town , Club and School and I couldn't be happier!! More french for mee!!
2) At my host brother's birthday party the president of my host club showed up and brought a map of new york , he asked me to find my town on the map annnnnndddd it was too small for the map, couldn't find it hahah.. another awkward situation.\
Btw I'd like to send out my condolences for those that passed away at Pukkelpop this weekend . :(
No comments:
Post a Comment